Month: December 2016

Telling others about your schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia can be tricky, often because of the stigma surrounding these illnesses (Telling Someone You Have a Mental Illness). Other people may have incorrect preconceived notions about these illnesses, such as the myth that a person with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder is violent. Here’s how I approach telling other people about my schizoaffective disorder.

Are you ready to live an anxiety-free life? You can actively take charge of this by writing your story of life without anxiety. Now is the perfect time to begin. At the time I’m writing this, we’re about to enter a brand new year. However, every single day is a new day with the promise of new beginnings, and you can write your story of a life without anxiety starting now, whenever “now” may be. Ready? Read on for more about how to use this new beginning to write your story and live an anxiety-free life.

The new year is approaching quickly and it is a perfect time to discuss working to reduce mental health stigma in the media. Mental health is one of the most relevant topics in present-day society. As a mental health advocate and a young adult with bipolar 2 disorder, the main change I hope to see in mental health in 2017 pertains to the stigma of mental illness. A good place to start reducing mental health stigma is in the news media, addressing its negative portrayal of mental illness.

Small changes to your coping with depression habits can dramatically improve your mental health and your life experience. We often think that change has to be big and immediate, but small, long-term changes are just as effective. By incorporating a few small changes into your daily routine, you can practice creating new habits with realistic standards. Here are two small changes I have made that have improved my coping with depression.

Each year, as the New Year rolls around, millions of us with eating disorders set our resolutions. One of the number one American resolutions is to exercise more, with gym memberships spiking in January and then waning soon after. Despite good intentions, many people’s motivation falls to the wayside with nothing more than a shrug. However, for those with eating disorders, resolutions involving our weight or bodies can make for a dangerous year (Are Your New Year’s Resolutions Aiding Your Eating Disorder Recovery?). Here’s how not to set a New Year’s resolutions with an eating disorder.

Before the new year begins, every mom needs to hear these simple words to preserve her sanity: good job. “Good job” may seem simple and a bit trite, but Christmas has a way of leaving mentally ill mamas strung out, exhausted, and defeated (Stressed Out! Stress, Mental Health, and Our Sense of Control). After all of the efforts spent making Christmas magical for everyone else, the house is a big old mess, the kids are exhausted, and daddy’s gone back to work. Mama’s left, again, to put it all back together, take down the decorations, and get the family ready for a brand spankin’ new year. It all seems a bit impossible. So Mama, before you start undecorating, washing dishes, and folding another load of Christmas pajamas, hear me out. Let’s talk about what every mom, mentally ill or not, needs to hear before the new year begins.

Happiness habits matter because living a blissful life, to some degree, is a choice. Choosing happiness habits matter to that choice. Even if you live with a chronic mental health disorder, you can choose to nurture practices that create happiness in your life. Make 2017 the year you kick start your happiness habit to build your bliss.

Saying mental illness and acceptance in the same breath might seem like an awful idea at first, but accepting your mental health condition can actually be a key player in removing, or at the very least alleviating, the stigma you face (Why It’s Hard to Accept a Diagnosis of a Mental Disorder). Personally speaking, accepting my mental illnesses for what they are helped both the self-stigma and external stigma I felt.

When you are living with a mental illness like posttraumatic stress disorder, setting and working toward specific goals is sometimes challenging. As someone who has posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), I know that there are times when my PTSD symptoms are worse than others and those times are often hard to predict. So when I set goals with PTSD, regarding either my recovery or other aspects of life, I try to keep in mind that I may have more to deal with than others who don’t suffer from a mental illness (How to Build Confidence and Achieve Your Goals).

My therapist will be taking a leave of absence for most of January due to major surgery. We spent the last session planning what to do since we won’t be meeting for about a month. I have other people on my treatment team I can check in with, but not everyone is so fortunate. This made me realize it might be a good idea to write about how to deal with a therapist’s absence.